IES Blog

In June, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) announced two new awards to technology firms to develop web-based tools that inform student decision making in postsecondary education. The projects will focus on generating a measure of the return of investment (ROI) for different educational training programs and careers so that high school and college students have access to data-driven information to guide their decisions.

The awards were made through a special topic offered by the IES Small Business Innovation Research (known as ED/IES SBIR) program, which funds the research and development of commercially viable education technology. (For information on the 21 awards made through the IES 2019 standard solicitation, read here.)

Background and Awards

While websites like College Scorecard and CareerOneStop provide information to explore training programs in colleges and occupations of interest, there is no tool that helps students understand the costs and benefits of individual postsecondary programs in an integrated, customizable, and user-friendly manner.  

The special topic SBIR solicitation requested proposals from small businesses to develop new ROI tools that would combine information on fees, time to complete, and projected earnings so that students can easily compare college and career pathways. The IES-funded ROI tools aim to improve student program completion rates, with higher employment and earnings, less education-related debt, and more satisfaction with their selected paths. The special topic SBIR solicitation offered up to $200,000 for firms to develop and evaluate a prototype of their ROI tool. 

Two awards were made through this special topic:

• Illinois-based BrightHive, Inc. is developing a prototype of the Training, Education, and Apprenticeship Program Outcomes Toolkit (TEAPOT). Designed to inform student training and educational decision making over a variety of potential pathways, TEAPOT will improve the flow and accuracy of data resulting in improved estimates of the ROI for different postsecondary education pathways.  The team will develop a data interoperability system and simplified toolkit for states and local postsecondary and workforce development organizations. The toolkit will provide more high quality, consistent, and granular information on postsecondary outcomes. The prototype will calculate ROI using student information, programmatic information (with an emphasis on net program costs to allow for variations by program type at the same institution), and access to wage and employment data sets.
• Virginia-based Vantage Point Consultants is developing a prototype of a user-contextualized ROI tool that prospective students will use to make meaning of lifetime costs and opportunity tradeoffs associated with different degree programs offered by postsecondary institutions. The ROI tool will incorporate information on student goals and academic, professional, and personal characteristics.  The prototype will include an interface to present information to guide decision making based on an ROI calculation that discounts earning cash-flows under current and future state career and education assumptions, while subtracting college cost. In the first phase of work, the project will use information from data partners including Burning Glass Technologies and from public sources at the Department of Labor and Department of Education.

After developing prototypes, researchers will analyze whether the tools function as intended and are feasible for students to use. Research will also test if the tool shows promise for producing a meaningful and accurate measure of ROI.  Both firms are eligible to apply for additional funding to complete the full-scale development of the ROI tool, including developing an interface to improve user experience and conducting additional validation research.

Stay tuned for updates on Twitter (@IESResearch) as IES projects drive innovative forms of technology.

Written by Edward Metz, program manager, ED/IES SBIR

Millions of students in thousands of schools around the country have used technologies developed through the Small Business Innovation Research program (ED/IES SBIR) at the IES. The program emphasizes rapid research and development (R&D), with rigorous research informing iterative development and evaluating the promise of products for improving the intended outcomes. The program also focuses on the commercialization after development is complete so that products can reach schools and be sustainable over time.

At the end of June, ED/IES SBIR announced 21 new awards for technology products for students, teachers, or administrators in education and special education. (IES also announced two additional awards through a special topic solicitation in postsecondary education. Read about these awards here.) Of the 21 awards, 13 are for prototype development and 8 for full scale development (a YouTube playlist of the full scale development projects is available here). 

Many of the new 2019 projects continue education and technology trends that have emerged in recent years. These include the three trends below.

Trend 1: Bringing Next Generation Technologies for Classrooms
For educators, it can be challenging to integrate next generation technologies into classroom practice to improve teaching and learning. In the current group of awardees, many developers are seeking to make this happen. Schell Games is developing a content creation tool for students to create artistic performances in Virtual Reality (VR) and Gigantic Mechanic is designing a class-wide role-playing game facilitated by a tablet-based app. codeSpark is building a game for children to learn to code by creating story based narratives. Killer Snails, Lighthaus, and AP Ventures are all creating educational content for VR headsets and Parametric Studios, Innovation Design Labs, and LightUp are employing Augmented Reality (AR) to support learning STEM concepts. Aufero is bringing modern design principles to develop a traditional board game for students to gain foundational computer science and coding skills.

Trend 2: Personalized Learning

Several 2019 awards are building technologies to provide immediate feedback to personalize student learning. Graspable, Inc. and Apprendis are developing adaptive engines that formatively assess performance as students do activities in algebra and physical science, and Sirius Thinking is building a multimedia platform to guide and support pairs of students as they read passages. Charmtech is developing a prototype to support English learners in reading, Cognitive Toybox is creating a game-based school readiness assessment, Hats & Ladders is developing a social skills game, and IQ Sonics is refining a music-based app for children with or at risk for disabilities to practice speaking.

Trend 3: Platforms that Host and Present Data
School administrators and teachers are always seeking useful information and data to guide decision making and inform instruction. Education Modified is developing a platform for special education teachers to implement effective Individual Education Programs (IEPs) for students with or at risk for disabilities, and VidCode is developing a dashboard to offer teachers real-time performance metrics on coding activities to teachers. LearnPlatform is developing a prototype platform that generates reports to guide teachers in implementing new education technology interventions in classrooms, and Liminal eSports is developing a platform administrators and teachers can use to organize eSports activities where students participate in group game activities to learn.

Stay tuned for updates on Twitter and Facebook as IES continues to support innovative forms of technology.

Written by Edward Metz, Program Manager, ED/IES SBIR

Along with my NCEE colleagues, I was excited to read the recent Notice Inviting Applications for the next cycle of Comprehensive Centers, administered by the Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

As you can see in the notice, Regional Comprehensive Centers will “provide high-quality intensive capacity-building services to State clients and recipients to identify, implement, and sustain effective evidence-based programs, practices, and interventions that support improved educator and student outcomes,” with a special emphasis on benefitting disadvantaged students, students from low-income families, and rural populations.

With this focus on supporting implementation, Regional Comprehensive Centers (RCCs) can amplify the work of NCEE’s Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) and What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). Learning from states, districts, and schools to understand their unique needs, and then being able to support high-quality implementation of evidence-based practices that align with those needs, has the potential to dramatically accelerate the process of improving outcomes for students.

RELs and the WWC already collaborate with today’s Comprehensive Centers, of course. But it’s easy to see how stronger and more intentional relationships between them could increase each program’s impact.

True to its name, the REL program has worked with educators to design and evaluate innovative practices – or identify, implement, and refine existing ones – to meet regional and local needs for more than 50 years. And since its inception in 2002, the WWC has systematically identified and synthesized high-quality evidence about the effectiveness of education programs, policies, and practices so that educators and other instructional leaders can put that information to use improving outcomes for students. But with more than 3.6 million teachers spread across more than 132,000 public and private schools nation-wide, making sure discoveries from education science are implemented at scale and with fidelity is no small feat. RCCs are welcome partners in that work.

RELs, the WWC, and Comprehensive Centers can play critical, complementary roles in taking discovery to scale (see Figure). With their analysis, design, and evaluation expertise, RELs – in partnership with states and districts, postsecondary institutions, and other stakeholders – can begin the process by designing and rigorously evaluating best practices that meet local or regional needs. (Or, as I will discuss in future messages, by developing and rigorously testing materials that support adoption of evidence-based practices.) The WWC follows, vetting causal impact studies, synthesizing their findings to better understand the strength of evidence that supports a practice and identifying its likely impact. Partners in the Comprehensive Centers can then “pick-up” those WWC-vetted practices, aligning them to needs of State and other clients, and supporting and sustaining implementation at scale. Finally, lessons learned from RCCs’ implementation efforts about what worked – and what didn’t – can be fed back to RELs, refining the practice and fueling the next cycle of discovery.

Those that follow the REL-WWC-RCC process know that what I’ve just described isn’t quite how these programs operate today. Sometimes, out of necessity, roles are more “fluid” and efforts are somewhat less well-aligned. The approach of “taking discovery to scale” depicted above provides one way of thinking about how each program can play a unique, but interdependent, role with the other two.

I have every confidence this is possible. After all, the North star of each program is the same: improving outcomes for students. And that means we have a unique opportunity. One we’d be remiss not to seize.

Matthew Soldner
Commissioner, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance
Institute of Education Sciences
U.S. Department of Education

As always, your feedback is welcome. You can email the Commissioner at matthew.soldner@ed.gov.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is seeking professionals in education-related fields to apply for an open position in the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE). Located in NCEE’s Evaluation Division, this position would support impact evaluations and policy implementation studies. Learn more about our work here: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee.

If you are even potentially interested in this sort of position, you are strongly encouraged to set up a profile in USAJobs (https://www.usajobs.gov/) and to upload your information now. As you build your profile, include all relevant research experience on your resume whether acquired in a paid or unpaid position. The position will open in USAJobs on July 15, 2019 and will close as soon as 50 applications are received, or on July 29, 2019, whichever is earlier. Getting everything in can take longer than you might expect, so please apply as soon as the position opens in USAJobs (look for vacancy number IES-2019-0023).

Approximately 18 percent of US adults are at the lowest levels of literacy and nearly 30 percent are at the lowest levels of numeracy. The adult education system serves adults with low skills, but many education researchers know little about the students or the setting.  Recently, NCER convened a working group of adult education instructors, administrators, and researchers to discuss adult education’s research and dissemination needs.

Mr. Marcus Hall, an adult education instructor at the Community Learning Center and JEVS Human Services in Philadelphia, participated in this working group. He spoke with Meredith Larson, NCER program officer for adult education, about his experiences and interests in research. A copy of the working group meeting summary is available here.